This book presents an account of several conjectures arising in commutative algebra from the pioneering work of Serre and Auslander-Buchsbaum. The approach is via Hochster's 'Big Cohen-Macaulay modules', though the complementary view point of Peskine-Szpiro and Roberts, who study the homology of certain complexes, is not neglected. Various refinements of Hochster's construction, obtained in collaboration with Bartijn, are included. A special feature is a long chapter written by Van den Dries which explains how a certain type of result can be 'lifted' from prime characteristic to characteristic zero. Though this is primarily a research monograph, it does provide introductions to most of the topics treated. Non-experts may therefore find it an appealing guide into an active area of algebra.

From 1-4 April 1986 a Symposium on Algebraic Groups was held at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, in celebration of the 350th birthday of the University and the 60th of T.A. Springer. Recognized leaders in the field of algebraic groups and related areas gave lectures which covered wide and central areas of mathematics. Though the fourteen papers in this volume are mostly original research contributions, some survey articles are included. Centering on the Symposium subject, such diverse topics are covered as Discrete Subgroups of Lie Groups, Invariant Theory, D-modules, Lie Algebras, Special Functions, Group Actions on Varieties.